The Department of Early Childhood Education hosted its 5th Conference of Research in Early Childhood Education in May 2019. The theme of this year’s conference was “Enhancing the Learning Outcomes of Disadvantaged Children.” The event attracted some 300 teachers, principals, parents, professionals, and other important stakeholders.
In their welcoming speeches, Prof. Kevin Chung, Head of the Department, highlighted the importance of engaging the school, family, and community in supporting children with disadvantaged backgrounds, whereas Prof. Allan Walker, Dean of the Faculty of Education and Human Development, highlighted the importance of considering utility, structure, and beauty when engineering quality education.
The keynote speaker, Prof. Mark O’Reilly from The University of Texas at Austin, United States, summarized meta-analytic findings, concluding that effective approaches to educating children with ASD include visual support, peer-mediated intervention, self-monitoring intervention, and behavioral analysis, cautioning against dubious approaches that have little empirical support.
The invited speakers, Drs. Tikky Chan and Jin Sun, assistant professors of the Department, shared their research on educating non-Chinese speaking children and children from low-income families. Their suggestions on actual practices drew particular attention from the audience.
The Department’s annual conference has been providing golden opportunities for researchers and practitioners to share their experiences with each other. Together, we can bring education to the next level.
